


Shatter Me

by Rens_Knight



Series: In the Burning of the Light [6]
Category: Star Wars Legends: The Old Republic
Genre: F/M, Literature, Sci-Fi, fan fiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-31
Updated: 2017-01-31
Packaged: 2018-10-23 04:21:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,694
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10712076
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rens_Knight/pseuds/Rens_Knight
Summary: Former Jedi Padawan Ashara Zavros found that the path to Hell was paved with good intentions when she granted a seeking Sith Lord named Tarssus Kallig entrance to the enclave and everything spiraled even more disastrously out of control than anyone imagined.While the passage of time suggests her strange new abode isn't actually the Hell she learned all her life to fear, her Jedi past still lies in tatters, and with it, all that she ever knew.  But so many things about this odd young human man are utterly unlike anything she was ever prepared for.  And the only way to bring some kind of balance to her world again is to find some way to understand--and hope that she can endure whatever she learns...





	Shatter Me

Ashara Zavros had been apprenticed to Sith Lord Tarssus Kallig for several months now--and she _still_ didn't know what to make of the young human sometimes.  Or what he meant to her.  

Not that she hadn't dealt with his species before; hard to avoid that.  Master Ocera ( _Force rest him_ ) had been human, albeit of a much more amply pigmented variant gentler on Togruta eyes at first...but it wasn't Kallig's pallor that lay at the root of her consternation, of course.  She'd learned _that_ much as a Jedi Padawan after all.  Even if she'd chafed at _some_ of her lessons, she certainly wasn't one to judge the man for a complexion that sometimes granted a bit more of a look at the veins and arteries beneath his skin than felt natural to Ashara.  

Looking past that to see him according to _his_ species' standards--that was easy.  That was youngling stuff.  Literally, first-lesson youngling stuff.  Humans weren't _that_ far off from what her instincts told her the Togruta norm must be.  Yeah, even with those montral-less, lekku-less heads and those manes in constant need of grooming and shaving, unlike Cathar fur ( _poor Master Ryen..._ ), which naturally knew where to stop its growth.  She knew how to divorce herself from her instinctive species views through the Light of the Force; she could see Lord Kallig the way a human woman would see him, and he wasn't bad looking at all.

And that was part of the _thing_ with Kallig.  He _wasn't_ bad looking--far from it.  True, you could wreath yourself in the Force to hide the disfigurement that came with steeping yourself in the Dark Side well enough to deceive even Jedi Councillors...but somehow she got the sense Lord Kallig _wasn't_ doing that.  That his pale flesh really was that unmottled, now that he spent most of his days aboard ship away from the sunlight that so easily scorched humans of his variant.  That his eyes really were that piercing aquamarine, not the glowing, bloodshot yellow that human eyes very much were _not_ supposed to be.

How could one, who hadn't _fallen_ into the way of the Sith, but been trained in it from the start, do what Kallig did?  He _was_ different.  That much she believed.  Found herself really, truly _wanting_ to believe, and sometimes ( _there is no emotion, there is no--_ )...  Truth time.  That scared the hell out of her.  The want, the _need_ to accept.

Somehow she _had_ to sort it out, even more so now that Lord Kallig had brought that dreadful second apprentice of his back to the ship from Korriban the week before, this one in what he gave her to understand was the traditional Sith way.  _What a disgusting bloodbath_ , she'd commented to Lord Kallig when he described it to her.  And this one had been _worse_ than what Kallig himself had endured; the Kaleesh apprentice, apparently, had been a complete whirlwind of destruction.  Batten down the hatches; here it comes...

Xivhkalrainik ( _am I even_ thinking _that right?_ ) was every single thing Tarssus Kallig seemed _not_ to be: arrogant, impulsive, bloodthirsty--in short, the very epitome of everything the Jedi had ever taught Ashara that a Sith Lord strove to be.  True, Lord Kallig had shown his displeasure: he had firmly denounced the Kaleesh's wanton bloodshed the instant they set foot aboard and made it known such would _not_ be tolerated aboard the _Fury_.

And Kallig himself--as he retired to his quarters, he'd looked _exhausted_ to the former Padawan, a trail of weary anguish dragging behind him like an overgrown headtail.

Still...how could she _know_ that this new apprentice wasn't what her Sith teacher truly stood for?  Especially when Kallig let slip that he too returned with blood on his hands, namely that of Overseer Harkun, who had forced both him and the Kaleesh through their trials at that hellhole known as the Sith Academy.

This was the man who had shown Ashara patience, encouragement, kindness, who sought a way to reshape his little corner of the universe into something better than how he found it.  Who seemed to have been telling the _truth_ when she brought him to her enclave on Taris.  This was the man who didn't care one whit about her species, unlike so many humans in the Sith Empire, a man who had trusted and believed in her more than _anyone_ she had ever--

 _No,_ don't _put him ahead of them!_ she shouted at herself.  For Kallig...he hadn't just killed Overseer Harkun.  He...was also the man who slew Masters Ryen and Ocera, the Jedi who had mentored her for as long as she could remember.

Her.  _She_ had let him in, _she_ had vouched for him, that as far as she could sense in the Force, he was telling the truth.  Damn it, she _still_ would say the same thing if forced to do it over, for that's what everything in her had and _still_ told her.  He'd meant it, he _did_ want to help, to withdraw the vengeful Force ghost of her ancestor from the enclave where it would aid him and rid the Jedi of its disturbance in the Force.  It was a win-win, he had an instinct for sniffing those out...just as he sniffed out places of learning.  Tarssus Kallig certainly did put the _inquiry_ in Inquisitor...he really _had_ wanted to parlay with Ryen and Ocera, even for a little bit--he said it; she yearned to believe it...

But things had spiraled out of control so fast--Ryen and Ocera, they had _not_ believed it, they'd challenged Kallig, and before she could step in between them and stop it ( _you'd be_ dead _if you did, Ashara, maybe you, maybe Kallig,_ and _maybe still Ryen and Ocera too_ ), her former masters lay dead at the pale human's hand and _she_ found herself marked anathema to the Jedi Order.  To everything she had ever known.  She had Fallen.  The Darkness of the Sith had claimed her...

Yet...his had _not_ been the first strike.  She could still hear Kallig's cry as they charged at him, the Sith Lord, the contamination, the filth amidst the treasure.  His eyes--they'd flared wide, his booming voice commanding, _Get_ back _, damn it, I told you everything!_   Then the surge of power building within him until lightning snaked its way around his entire body, discharging only when her masters laid hands on him to eject him from the enclave.  It exploded in a single split-second burst, hurling them back against the walls, stunned.  _Listen!_ Don't _make me--_

They'd drawn their sabers--then Kallig the bleeding blade of the Sith...

And there it ended, Kallig staring down at their remains-- _the tatters of her only past_ \--mutely transfixed just as Ashara herself, until the spirit of her ancestor, Kalatosh Zavros, demanded a reckoning of Lord Kallig for what he'd done.  She could have sworn she heard Kallig curse himself under his breath as he sheathed his saber.

Sith killer.

Sith reformer.  Teacher.  Confidant.  More...

How could it be that this man of the Dark Side, when they sat together in study, summoned such warmth in her, and sowed not subservience as master of the Fallen one, but...trust, in spite of everything?  Friendship...affection?  Him?  After all of this...?

But now the ground beneath all of that quaked once more, making old wounds new again.  He said he had taken the new apprentice for appearances--he couldn't _officially_ train a Jedi Padawan who still hadn't truly renounced her Order...hell, he probably couldn't officially train at _all_ in his way, let alone _her_.  So yes, there was political intrigue there.  But there also seemed to be some sort of _hope_ that drove the Sith Lord despite his apparent unease.  Was she now so far Fallen into a Sith trap that she was irrevocably doomed, as Ryan and Ocera had always warned?

In the here and now, the Kaleesh apprentice paraded into the training chamber, his glowering presence casting a shadow across everything it touched, including Tarssus Kallig himself, who paced ahead deep in thought.  It wasn't the apprentice's imposing species that made him such a forbidding figure; Master Tykan proved otherwise in every holoimage she'd ever seen of the Kaleesh Jedi.  It was the fury that burned in this one's eyes in fierce opposition to the deep-seeing empathy of Cin Tykan's golden eyes...

Eyes, despite the vast gulf in anatomy, far more like those of Tarssus Kallig.

Lord Kallig swept his hand at the floor mats.  "Be seated."

Ashara followed first, the other apprentice a second later with a huff of exasperation.

After a few moments of contemplative silence, the pale human spoke again.  "We will follow a slightly different lesson plan today," he announced.  "I will ask each of you one question to be answered before us, and we will see through the path where that question leads.  Then you will each ask _me_ one question, and I will give you the same opportunity."

A low rumble issued from the Kaleesh's throat--a grating sound Ashara could _never_ imagine the dignified Master Tykan making.

"Restrain yourself," Kallig warned, his deep voice nearly a rumble of its own.  The noise stopped immediately.

Once satisfied, the human resumed his course.  "Xalek, the first question goes from me to you."

That wasn't his true name--Lord Kallig had wrestled with the Kaleesh syllables all week until just yesterday, when the new apprentice had finally grunted, _Xalek_.  That was the name Harkun had foisted on him--Kallig mentioned as much, swore to fight on...but Xalek had conceded anyway.  _You tried._ That _creature never bothered._   As far as Xalek was concerned, that curt explanation sufficed.

"Tell me," Kallig inquired, "what does your mask mean to you?"  Xalek's clawed hand flew up as if to ward off an attempt to strip him of the repurposed skull that covered his face.  "No, Xalek, I do not challenge your choice to wear it.  I simply wish to know."

Xalek blinked.  Ashara sympathized ( _hey, there's a first time for everything!_ ); she'd found it odd the first time Kallig demonstrated his interest with _her_ in what it meant to be other-species.  His kind in the Empire were supposed to look upon everyone else as subsentients.  But Kallig had been palpably saddened to discover that often, Ashara couldn't answer his questions, for she knew how to be Jedi, not how to be a woman of the Togruta homeworld.  But then, he'd carried a Togruta spirit...inside him?...bound to him?...for as long as she'd known him.  In that light, his inquiries made sense.  

He didn't hold the spirit of a Kaleesh warrior.  Yet Lord Kallig's irrepressible curiosity _still_ flowed forth.

Apparently convinced--sort of--of the Sith Lord's intent, Xalek complied.  "It means _honor_.  A warrior's face in front of the world should be their deeds.  Not their accidents of birth.  This mask is for courage and strength in battle.  To tell my enemies to _fear_ what I can do!"

Ashara visibly winced.  Lord Kallig's eyes darted in her direction, but he didn't reproach her.  Instead he met Xalek's boast head-on.  "What is honor on Kalee?"

"Honor...is where you stand before others.  _Winning_.  Carrying on your ancestor's traditions and making them proud so the gods among them will bless you."

Kallig raised an eyebrow.  "Interesting.  Gods _and_ the Force."

"Of course," Xalek replied.

"What about how you win?" the human queried.  "What does Kaleesh tradition say about that?"

" _Thou shalt not defile the bodies of thy enemies; bestow upon them full sanctity of the grave_ ," Xalek recited in Ancient Kaleesh; Ashara heard with the ears of the Force.  " _Thou shalt not don a speaking being's skull as thy mask; stand on thine own deeds._ "  The former Padawan shuddered.  What kind of society had to enshrine _that_ kind of obvious counsel into law?  " _Thou shalt not profane the spirits of thy enemies; laud them according to their honor when thou tell'st the tale of their defeat_."

"So there is a right way and a wrong way to handle your victory after it's secured," Kallig mused--still seeming to Ashara as though he hadn't found his quarry.  "There are plenty of gloating gundarks in the Empire who could stand a hearty dose of _that_ advice.  Now what about the _process_ of winning?"

" _Fiercely slay thy enemies without tarry, and_ only _thy enemies._ "  Xalek paused, snarled.  "Where are you _going_ with this, my lord?"

"Do not take that tone," Kallig fired back, far harsher than he ever had with her--even when they outright _argued_.  Then again...when _she_ tested him, she did so _in private_.  The black-maned human's anger spent itself immediately though.  "Learn to speak in a more disciplined manner, and you will find you obtain many answers with far less resistance.  Tone notwithstanding, Xalek, the _content_ of your question is quite valid.  To answer...I believe you are more than intelligent enough to know why your own statement gave you pause.  But sometimes there is a difference between awareness of a fact, and truly _internalizing_ it.  So tell me...how did you indict yourself?"

Xalek growled again--frustration, yes, but this time the sound struck Ashara as more ruminative than before.  "I do not know, Master."

"Hm.  I think you know--but you do not yet _know_."  Before Xalek had a chance to gripe again about the Sith Lord being slow to yield the solution, Kallig forged on.  "The acolytes you murdered...they weren't your enemies, Xalek.  Harkun was.  _He_ was the one who pitted you all against each other."

"Did _you_ not kill acolytes, my lord?" Xalek retorted.  Ashara leaned forward.  _This_ she had to hear.

Tarssus Kallig sighed a long, deep sigh.  "I did.  _Defensively_.  Yes, too many times.  If I couldn't slip my way past a confrontation, I stood my ground and I killed.  But the entire time I _seethed_ with the knowledge that it wasn't wholly their idea; it was Harkun's, and everyone who pulled his strings.  You attacked _first_ , premeditated.  Therein lies the difference.  I understand what it is to be a slave set free...but you made them pay the price for your pain."

"Yet--Master, _you_ killed Harkun...you struck him first; you must have planned it!"

Kallig closed his eyes as _something_ floated before his inner vision that he very much did not wish to behold.  "I had done my research by the time I returned to Korriban by the end of your trials, Xalek.  And I learnt that what I thought typical of the Sith--oh, it's brutal, no matter who serves as Overseer, but I found Harkun had taken it to unspeakable extremes.  He _enjoyed_ the carnage and the suffering, like the Hutts revel in blood sport.  I heard even worse of him--and I was apt to believe it.  For the dead tell no tales, and if he _always_ engineered the outcome in advance as he tried to do with my rival, then he knew who his marks would be.  The fear you and I instilled in him protected us--but some of the ones thrown as meat into his grinder--"  

The Sith Lord visibly shuddered.  "If you are asked--officially, I killed Harkun for his allegiance to Zash and suspected ties to Thanaton.  Unofficially--I did it to cleanse the Academy of his extraordinary sadism so that no one else would have to suffer under him.  It does not matter to me that _I_ did not suffer thus, but I know others have.  I killed him with purpose.  To set things a bit closer to right, because I knew that no one else would hold him accountable.  That makes all the difference."

Ashara glanced down at the floor, shaken by what the Force waves roiling off of Lord Kallig's spirit revealed.  Truly Sith depravity knew no bounds--the Jedi would _never_ tolerate that sort of preying upon Padawans!  Never!  Her heart resisted even the hint of it.

"But Xalek...I don't say that simply to condemn you.  I don't believe honor is permanently fixed, is it?"  He gestured towards the bone mask.  "The designs you paint--are you allowed to change them?"

Xalek grunted his acknowledgment.  "Of course," he replied again.

"I see it the same," Kallig replied, succinct at last, as Xalek would surely have it.  

Now Lord Kallig turned to the Togruta Padawan.  "Ashara...here is my question for you.  Tell me what fuels your passion."

The words flew from her tongue unbidden: they had been drilled into her from earliest childhood, practically since she'd spoken her first full sentences.  There'd been _Tammin the Aurebeshical Tooka_ , then _Kt'Kit: The MathemANTician of Geometronosis_...and the Jedi Code closely in tow.  " _There is no emotion_ ," she recited, " _there is peace._ "  Something flickered in Kallig's eyes--displeasure like he'd shown Xalek?  "That's what the Jedi say," she added.

It wasn't disappointment, Ashara realized.  Lord Kallig lowered his tone.  "Is there something you love doing, that you love so deeply that you would give up everything else if you could only have that one thing?"

"If you love something to the exclusion of everything else," Ashara rebutted, "that makes you fanatical and it clouds your judgment.  That's the first step to the Dark Side."  Did she really have a right to _say_ that, Fallen Jedi that she was?  Xalek, for his part, rolled his eyes.

Kallig, however, did exactly the opposite.  "You do have a valid point about perspective and target," he calmly acknowledged.  "Fixing your eyes upon a supernova will only get you burnt.  Not all stars are suitable for life--some are too cold and too weak to provide for their systems...some are too large and too quick to die for life to take hold...and some are too greedy to use their surroundings as fuel to allow anything to grow.  All of that is true.  But do you really believe that is _all_ that's out there--stars so paltry as to foster frozen stagnation, or stars so violent as to die in violent supernovae?  Why must the fear of the one drive you to the other?  Surely your homeworld--Shili--must have had a life-giving star, just like Dromund Fels?"

Ashara knew full well that the Sith Lord spoke in layers, but this felt easier somehow.  Well...sort of.

The thing was, that comparison hardly held--she had no real memory of Shili, no more than the other things Lord Kallig had asked her of what it meant to be Togruta.  She couldn't answer the questions Xalek could of the ways of Kalee; all she held was a vague echo of a sun in a different light.  True, it was said that humans were so ancient and so far-flung a race that most of them had forgotten their home star was ever Coruscant, and simply adopted whatever would sustain them.  But still...Lord Kallig had known _some_ star he called his own, even though it gave him such a _hard_ life to live...

Softly, Kallig cleared his throat.  "Ashara?"

"Sorry, m'lord," she mumbled.

"Can you find an answer?" he asked in the same gentle tone, his aquatic blue eyes searching her own.  "Something that drives you to move, that will not let you sit still...?"

The question never had been about birth stars, even with Kallig's digression--that she well knew, but somehow both had entangled in her mind as if by quantum locking.  "I guess..."  She shrugged, gathering her fragmented thoughts.  She had no claim on _anything_ her life had once been--yet it was all she had ever known, all she ever wanted...what was it that remained, that kept her going from day to day in such enigmatic company?  "I guess I want to make things _better_...to take the fight to evil and make the galaxy a better place..."  ( _Yeah, real nice holoceleb answer there, really deep..._ )

"Could it be," Tarssus Kallig inquired, a kind smile playing at the edges of his lips, "that compassion is called what it is, because at its root it is a true _passion_?"  He shook his head at some unsettling internal thought, to which he then gave voice.  "To think that compassion could be taught as a static philosophy without breathing it fully into life..."

Ashara felt her lekku stiffen.  "The Jedi _are_ compassionate--they do so much good for so many--"

"And yet that detachment makes it so easy to choose when it's convenient," Kallig rebutted, "politically or otherwise.  True, sentiment _alone_ isn't always enough--myself, I sometimes _despise_ people I am moved to preserve.  I brought back a father's son once, a lost acolyte--only to have him reject what I'd done, even reject his father, who had been worried _sick_ for him, as weak.  And I did it knowing the risk.  But just because relying solely on sentiment to be one's guide is faulty, that doesn't mean going the other way and turning good works into the equivalent of a navcomp moving along its course.

"Just as I told Xalek, though, I will tell you: I don't say what I do to condemn you."  The ghost of a smile traced itself across the human's face once more.  "You have the seed of something, Ashara.  Don't be afraid to nurture it."

"Yes, my lord," Ashara whispered at this...the lesson of a Sith Lord.  A lesson no one back on Taris, neither the dead for whom she bore the guilt, nor the living who knew of her Fall, would ever believe.  He left her soul stirred up so far from anything resembling peace, so far from the still void of meditation--

\--and he was speaking again.  The Togruta started.  "Xalek," Kallig was saying, "it is time for _your_ question of me."

The Kaleesh exhaled sharply: _that_ was easy, he seemed to be saying.  "Why do we sit around and tell _stories_ , Master, when we have _enemies_ to train against?"

"To be fully prepared for battle of any kind, we must understand who we fight _with_ \--both ourselves and our comrades," Lord Kallig answered, "what we fight _for_ , and the many _ways_ of fighting, some of which involve our sabers and our lightning, and some of which take place outside the realm of physical combat.  But give me another question, Xalek--one within the spirit of the exercise."

"Very well," Xalek conceded.  "Why does it trouble you when you kill with honor?  Is honor not enough for you?"

Lord Kallig's eyes grew distant as the human retreated within himself--deep into memory...Voss, perhaps, where the mystics' healing rituals had dredged up every pain, every stain upon the Sith Lord's conscience.  

"I think it would trouble me far more if the unease within me _stopped_ ," he eventually replied, seeming to counsel himself every bit as much as Xalek.  "That would mean I had stopped bothering to compare my actions to my conscience.  It would mean I had attacked and killed out of mere habit or ritual, that I never paused to consider if _this_ circumstance was different from _that_ one.  It's better, I think, that I _do_ question what I've done.  That I _do_ wonder what I could have done differently, if there was something I missed, or what I could learn for next time."

"But take Harkun," Xalek pressed.  "If he did what you said, then there's _nothing_ to regret!  The blood he shed and his base dishonor demanded his _death_!"

"Even so," Lord Kallig said, "the fact that the circumstance existed--that Harkun crossed the line so flagrantly that he had to die--I had to act, yet the fact that it _was_ necessary, the fact that I could _feel what he had done was evil_...that in itself is a reminder that something has gone wrong in the universe.  And something else in me stands outside all of that, and recognizes that just because a thing _is_ does not mean it _should_ be.  I know that even though I have not _seen_ all that should be.  I see far, far too many Sith who just _get used to it_.  Who get _comfortable_ with it.  Who _celebrate_ it.  I could never hope to destroy all of the Harkuns on my own.  He was only one man, one variant of an archetype.  

"But even with such as him as my targets, I never want to let myself _get used to_ killing."  He regarded Xalek in deepest solemnity.  "Does that answer your question?"

"Perhaps," Xalek answered, talons scraping across the floor as he shifted positions yet again.

Lord Kallig left it at that, turning his attention back to Ashara.  _Surely_ her question couldn't come across to him worse than _that_ incredibly incisive one ( _could it?_ )--yet somehow she still feared offending him.  "It's your turn, Ashara," he prompted.  "Ask."

"My lord," she began, dipping her head in the formal Sith way, "you say you try to walk a path with Light.  But if that's true...I don't understand why the crystal of your saber still bleeds.  Why it's red," she clarified, realizing the Sith probably saw their warping of the Force as _normal_ , and wouldn't apply a saying like that.  Yet... _warped_...how could she call Tarssus Kallig _warped_ , with all the gentleness he managed to wield when the Imperial authorities weren't looking?

"My saber is an ancestral one," the Sith Lord replied--a rare thing among Jedi, of course, "and beyond that, I am closely attuned to the Force spirit of Lord Aloysius Kallig, who bequeathed it to me himself."  He touched the silver diadem that crossed his forehead, then hid behind his black mane as it circled over his ears.  "This came from the silver embellishments of his mask, after I asked his permission.  Not because I view him as a god," Tarssus Kallig clarified for the Kaleesh apprentice, who now stared at him with unconcealed awe, "but it _did_ seem like the polite thing to do given we are aware of each other."  That brought a brief glimmer to the human's eye, like the sun dancing across a tropical ocean.

"That's to say," Kallig continued, "that my crystal resonates to _two_ souls in the Force instead of just one, and apparently, there's something about me that means it likely always will."  Ashara nodded.  That _did_ make a perverse sort of sense: Aloysius Kallig could still be Dark even if his descendant resisted.  "I don't think that's the only reason, though.  My _first_ saber--the one I received from my prior master--remained red after it was passed over to me.  I _am_ still Sith.  I still _act_ in the Force; I do not submit myself as a passive conduit.  I expect that leaves its impression.  That is the best answer I can provide."

Ashara gave another wordless nod.  _Her_ own sabers still blazed blue, a color that according to her old masters, she should no longer be entitled to.  It knotted her stomach to contemplate it, but could there be things Ryen and Ocera hadn't understood, that somehow Lord Kallig did?

"We shall adjourn for now," the human announced, rising with a clap that signaled dismissal.  Xalek, unsurprisingly, egressed at near light speed.  Ashara moved a bit slower--slow enough that Kallig overtook her before she could exit the room.  Not that she sensed anything to be wary of in his approach--he kept a respectful distance and a polite gaze as always, but there _was_ always that twitchy Sith Force aura around him, very much unlike the placid presence her former masters had sought to cultivate in her.  And failed.

"I didn't mean to give you the sense I was evading your question," Tarssus Kallig confided.  "Some things are hard to frame into words, especially with such a vast cultural chasm between us.  There is one more thing I can think to try: you may come watch me meditate sometime.  Don't tell me when you intend to visit; simply do.  Would that interest you?"

To watch him meditate?  What use could there possibly be in _that_?  She knew what her meditation was about: stillness, emptiness, until nothing but the Force and a vague notion of her place in it remained.  And she knew what it felt like if she went too long between sessions--unbalanced, frazzled inside, like a tempest building within.  It frightened her...

Yet she promised, "I will."

 

The meditation chamber aboard the _Fury_ seemed vast--a hangar-like structure spanning two decks in height, but domed, hardly a sharp edge to be seen except where the vaulted ceiling?...walls?...sloped down to meet the level floor.  Ashara looked down to Lord Kallig from her vantage point on the second deck through a window of plasteel.  Nearly invisible plasteel mesh ran across the window and every other surface until it disappeared beneath the floor mat; Ashara wondered what that might be for.

There seemed--as she had expected--nothing remarkable about the Sith Lord, who knelt motionless on the floor.  He had not even stirred at her approach; from all she'd ever seen of him, his Force sense of the living mainly functioned only through his direct attentions.  Deep in meditation as he was, Ashara suspected he remained unaware of her presence.

No, wait.  Kallig _wasn't_ motionless, not anymore.  Maybe he never had been.  She couldn't hear what he was saying through the window, but his lips formed some sort of chant or invocation.  Then, stretching his arms wide and craning his neck towards some point on the ceiling, Tarssus Kallig's eyes slowly opened and he unfolded his body in a fluid continuation of his prior motions, languidly taking to his feet with no help from his hands or the Force.

What--was that all?  It didn't seem like much, certainly not the answer to any questions...

Kallig began to trace a slow circle about the perimeter of the room, knees slightly bent, as if gauging an opponent, except--wait, was that _music_ that had just erupted like thunder inside the meditation chamber?  What in all the stars of the galaxy could he possibly intend with _that_?  No Jedi would _ever_ tolerate such an indulgence in meditation or combat training; how could this serve him in any way?  The music had an insistent, rhythmic quality, not unlike the tribal drums of her own people's ancient traditions ( _what about his, how many different traditions do humans_ have _, anyway, they're so spread out as a race, and would any of it have Sith Pureblood elements in the Empire?_ ).  But there was more: powerful synth elements thudded and swept across the percussive tableau, overwhelming the natural elements beneath.

With the lights of the meditation chamber dimmed to a low, almost ultraviolet blue, Lord Kallig ignited his crimson saber and flicked it back and forth as if testing another's blade...

And then he struck, the rhythm of the music shifting into gear as one with his movements.  Calisthenics, Ashara figured--not meditation after all...except the way he moved...it wasn't the syncopated staccato of battle, but plotted, precise, almost felinoid in grace, like-- _stop!  Don't compare him to Master Ryen!_   Yet Kallig displayed that same sublime awareness of body and motion, the kind Ashara had thought only Cathars among the galaxy's males to be capable of.  Sometimes Kallig feinted, jabbed, and slashed--other times he wielded the saber with hypnotic flourishes she had never seen from him in true combat.  And sometimes, he moved with his eyes closed as if searching for something else within himself.

Somehow, this _was_ meditation.

The song changed--and now Tarssus Kallig began to _crackle_ , alive with Force lightning running in tiny arcs across the human's mane and robes as he moved, snapping in precise intervals from the fingers of his left hand as he continued to slice at air and shadow with the saber in his right.

Then the energy writhed, circling and climbing around him, his body lifted into the air--

\-- _he set his hand on her shoulder and whispered, strangely soft against the crashes and shouts of combat: "Don't be afraid."  Then the wild energies swirled upon him, forming above him into a snapping, popping orb of electrical horror as he rose off the ground...a Force storm with herself dead in the eye, she was going to die when it burst, it would hit her as it spewed across the field of combat.  Her heart hammered and then came the deafening crack from above--_

 __\--ferocious bolts jolted forth in a radiant starburst, slamming harmlessly on the plasteel mesh, whose purpose Ashara now understood: an electromagnetic cage.  One bolt even struck the observation window directly before her in a benign ricochet, making her jump so high she couldn't believe she hadn't hit her montrals on the ceiling.  But no, just as then, just as _every_ time she'd stood near him as he summoned that terrible lightning, there she remained untouched, none the worse for the experience.

But what sort of meditation produced _this_?  Ultimate darkness, they'd always taught her, awful bolts capable of leaching the life out of the body, even the joy and goodness from the soul, corrupting everything it touched, strictly forbidden to any who lived under the Jedi Code...

Yet _this_ man, this _Sith_ in all of his contradictions and heresies of Light, remained the master of his lightning, honing his attacks to a tight artistry that flew against everything she'd ever heard about the unshackled rage and the _glee_ in destruction required to produce it.  She'd seen him hit merely to stun before--even...even the first outburst he'd used to repel Ryen and Ocera-- _it_ had been like that too, intense yet infinitesimally quick, dazing but not draining.

Another storm, another orb coalescing within the meditation chamber above Kallig as he rose, ready to explode, right up to the edge and yet--

 _Nothing_.

The energy evaporated right back into the Sith Lord with the suddenness of its first eruption.  _Completely_ unheard of, to tame the storm that completely yet still call upon it at a moment's notice...!

Kallig weaved back and forth, more saber forms he displayed, and then a third building storm--this one called back into him slowly as if viewing the original upswelling in reverse.

The music shifted yet again and every hint of lightning vanished, absorbed in a rapid welter of ornamental saber spins, his acrobatics accompanied by explosive leaps and precise footwork, catapulting himself into the air and landing hard upon bare feet, throwing his weight back from toe to heel as he hit the ground and bent his knees to absorb the shock.  All the while, he swapped his saber from one hand to the other in time to the ever-insistent, ever-pounding music--and then for an instant between songs, he extinguished his saber and froze stock still mid-motion.

None of it--none of what came before--could have prepared her for _this_.  Tarssus Kallig's eyes closed once more as a gentler tune began, still rhythmic, yes, but melodic, yearning, mournful, joyful all at once.  The lightning began to flicker around his body again, ebbing and flowing from feet to head, this time with a strange, impossible calm--running from its typical violet hue into _blue_ this time, _blue_ like the ocean waves, _blue_ like the Sith Lord's eyes... _stop it, Ashara, stop it!_

 __But she _could not_ tear her eyes away, no matter how she tried--not because of any Force of his, or any awareness at all, reaching for her mind, but something else deep within.  Kallig's tall, thin frame unfolded and rose with all the grace of a water bird reaching out to the wind as the life flowed back into him and he moved not as one training for war, but as one enraptured, moving simply because he _could_ , simply for its own sake, the creative arrangement of step and flourish, balance and imbalance, but never truly stillness, and with the lightning he sculpted and fired off with every subtle, fluid movement of his hands and fingers, he looked like what Andronikos Revel would've called a "one-man rave"--

\-- _the pilot...pirate, really...Revel, snickered as he leered at Ashara, the crooked reptilian grin of one delighting in a lascivious secret as he pointed at the paler human on the other side of the cantina.  "He's got an eye for the dancing ladies, if y'know what I mean..."  She'd seen him studying the Twi'lek dancers on more than one occasion, tracking their every move.  She'd seen him whisper to one of them after the show and then nodding in turn as she spoke.  She'd held that image as warning in her meditations against attachment, against letting slip her Jedi resolve to one such as him--_

 __\--Ashara gasped.

 _By the Living Force!_   He'd seen it all wrong, Revel had, and the more she watched the stream of unguarded emotions flitting across Kallig's face, she _knew_.  He hadn't been leching after the dancing girl at all--he'd been _studying_ her instead as a practitioner of art, searching for a new and innovative step, a flourish of the fingers, something else to weave into this--this _dance_ of storm and song.

As the human lithely traced his patterns out before her, his white-red-grey tabard streaming out behind him in patterns like the tails of a comet, he drew the Force to himself and the friction of the floor lessened more and more until it seemed he danced upon the thinnest cushion of air like ice, his bolts of Force lightning coruscating back and forth across the spectrum faster than she'd ever seen them do before.  She'd seen it before, his lightning shifting hues mid-battle, but never in such quick succession.  There was something about the Sith Lord's lightning, something about the way he called it that no one, not even the rest of his order, had ever imagined...!

The charges rippled back and forth, some with a single _crack_ as they arced between his hands and through his body, some tracing their way up the walls and across the ceiling, patterns sketched through a combination of steps of the feet and flicks of the finger.  They glinted off of the silver diadem that he had engraved himself, reflected light caught up like a burning jewel at the center of his forehead.  

He positively _skated_ across the floor now, his body leaning to an impossible angle as he gathered speed.  Then he drifted back to the center of the meditation chamber, his arms flung wide, carried by his momentum into a dizzying spin, accelerating as he drew his arms back up above his head, sculpting the electric currents that flowed up his body into an orb between his hands again-- _yellow_ this time, blazing _yellow_ like the stars that most cherished sentient life--

Ashara swayed as the energy built within _her_ : the knot of realization snapping within her in time to a shower of sparks from Kallig's Force storm.  _What was this_ that cried out in time to the alternating currents of anguish and elation across Tarssus Kallig's face?  What would it be to dance in time to the same beat as this man, not by the strict dictates of the utilitarian Jedi calisthenic, bereft of the inspiring breath of the moment?

The Togruta...apprentice?...acolyte?...caught herself, leaning on the handrail yet feeling inside as if she had vaulted forward from the deck, shattered the plasteel window, leapt forth without even the Force to catch her when she fell.  Nothing but her own strength and instinct to pick out a survivable landing.  _What was this_ that seized her in both the body and the spirit, that cast her mind into this tumultuous whirl that gave to her just as well as it took away?

The music ceased.  Lord Tarssus Kallig fell still at last, his chest heaving from the exertion and signaling that even in this static stance, he was still ever so alive.

And through the Force, through the fabric of reality itself, life called out to life.  


**Author's Note:**

> Soundtrack: ["Marco Polo"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qG0cDEqpG_E) by Loreena McKennitt, ["Land of Stone"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmPOwBYFOyo) by Truth, ["Nasty"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V88zftYqkQA) by Proxima, ["Voodoo"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HzHQrUGR-U8) by Noisia, ["Middle of the Night (Bl4ck Owlz Remix)"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e0ffx6w01bg) by Evol Intent, and ["Shatter Me"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=49tpIMDy9BE) by Lindsey Stirling
> 
>  
> 
>  **Acknowledgment:** This story is written with gratitude for the inspiration of Stareyed at Archive of Our Own, for her stories "[Xalek's Lesson](http://archiveofourown.org/works/685139)" and "[Ashara's Lesson](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1052084)," which imply much slower progress in the romance between her version of the Light Sith Inquisitor, Cathan Kallig, and companion Ashara Zavros than the game does. While there are distinct personality and background differences between my Tarssus Kallig and Stareyed's Cathan Kallig (the nature of their enslavements and attitude towards talking about their pasts, for starters)--enough, I feel, to keep the two stories separate, I must give credit to Stareyed for her idea; it just felt so right that I knew I had to use that timing too. I only wish that Stareyed would write some more Cathan stories, as Cathan feels alive to me as a reader just as Tarssus Kallig does to me as his writer.


End file.
